


can i play with madness?

by livingtheobsessedlife



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Pepper Potts is a strong independent woman, Post-Infinity War, The Avengers Are Good Bros, but she’s also sad, lots of Iron man suit admiration, mostly just angst, steve tries to make her less sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 03:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17635031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livingtheobsessedlife/pseuds/livingtheobsessedlife
Summary: Most people leave behind a detailed and carefully written will and testament for their loved ones when they pass.Instead, Tony leaves behind a suit.





	can i play with madness?

**Author's Note:**

> In my defense, I wrote this before the A4 trailer came out or the Rescue rumors... angst happened. 
> 
> Title from Iron Maiden song.

When Tony doesn’t come back, doesn’t come crashing to the earth like a falling star or a bird without its wings, everybody assumes he got snapped away like the rest of the world. And if he hadn’t been snapped away, it was just as likely that he had been vaporized somewhere in the boundlessness of space, floating among interstellar objects like the star Tony had always said he was. 

A week past desolation and looking to the sky, Pepper concedes. 

He was gone. Definitely gone. 

No more excuses. 

A tear hits the sidewalk like a single drop of rain before a storm, and Pepper feels her fists clench as she stands idly in front of the old Stark Tower, empty now, faraway, not hers anymore. She aches inside, like a giant purple monster is trying to punch his way out of her insides. 

But she knows she can’t mourn. 

There are too many gone, too many good people turned to dust besides even Tony Stark. If she were to start mourning now, god, she would never stop. 

The list of those confirmed disappeared by The Snap cycles through on an electronic billboard in Times Square, endless. She’s stood there for hours, watching, eyes scanning the board for people she recognizes and her heart aching like it was being pulled right out of her chest every time she actually saw one. She only witnessed the list’s end once, briefly, as the names moved to cycle through all over again, vicious, repetitive, forever and infinite. 

Pepper picks herself up, forces herself to look away from this monolith of the tower that somehow meant even more to her than it had meant to the New York City skyline. Her whole body itches with the need to help, it aches with it. 

She picks herself off of the curb and brushes herself off, but her pantsuits have all been wrinkled for the past week no matter what she does, her heels scuffed, her handbag stuffed with broken promises that jangle like gold coins and iron chains. 

Pepper pulls out her phone, scrolls down to Happy’s contact information, and…. remembers he’s gone. Just like everybody else. She puts her phone away, ignores the rock pummeling it’s way to the bottom of her stomach, and pulls out the car keys instead. They feel heavy in her hand, unfamiliar. 

Things are different now. 

It’s not that she ever forgot how to drive, but being in that Stark Industries town car feels just so different, so wrong, when Happy isn’t at the wheel, making wisecracks about her abysmal working habits and how ‘dashing she looks today’. That feeling of emptiness that permeated the leather seats fills every orifice of her life. 

Pepper puts the keys into the car and turns on the ignition. As she drives away, what used to be Avengers Tower gets smaller on the horizon of her car mirrors. 

She heads upstate. It’ll be quieter there, less reminders, less of this nauseating noise. 

She spends two days at the compound upstate and does nothing but stare soberly at Tony’s liquor cabinet. She doesn’t take a single sip, doesn’t move an inch, just stares at it and hopes to any god that’s left that Tony will walk in at any minute and ask her if today was the day she decided she wanted to live on the wild side for once and drink with him. 

There’s work she could potentially be doing, calls she could be making, apologies she could be drafting and plans she could be assembling. It all seems a lot harder to do after she’s alone, staring back at her reflection in the glass of Tony’s abandoned liquor cabinet. Her phone rings somewhere, and she continues to stare.

On the third day, the Avengers show up. 

God, she’s so stupid for having hope. 

When Pepper sees Steve’s face for the first time in two years, even coated in dirt and scars, she has hope. Stupid, ugly hope. 

She turns away from the liquor cabinet, “Is Tony with you?” She demands, and goodness she doesn’t even say hello. She doesn’t feel she needs to. 

Steve’s eyes grow three sizes and he shakes his head solemnly. 

It hurts more now than it did before. 

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says, at her side. His hand wraps around her arm kindly, like he’s making sure she knows somebody is there for her. It’s surprisingly grounding, helpful, but it taunts the damn tears like nothing else, “We thought he was with you.”

Pepper does nothing but shake her head, leaning slightly into his touch, so light it was as if gravity had done it for her. Bruce’s grip tightens on her arms. It’s not as weird as it should be. There’s only one thing on her mind anyway. 

Everybody had thought Bruce had been dead for years, the entire world did. He had disappeared so many years ago, flown into space without a trace. She should be more shocked that he’s here now, a tender hand on her. Shock would’ve made more sense, at least, than this pummeling feeling. 

Instead, she mourns. Pepper doesn’t have time to marvel at necromancy. She shakes her head, “I should’ve known. He’s never where he’s supposed to be. Always late.”

It’s supposed to be a joke. It doesn’t sound like one. It just sounds sad. 

Pepper spends the rest of the day locked in one of Tony’s workshops. There are still tools strewn everywhere and she doesn’t dare touch them. She knows how Tony gets when people touch his things and Pepper doesn’t want him to be upset over such menial things when he gets back ( _when he gets back, when he gets back, when he gets back_ ). 

That night, she drinks ( _and drinks, and drinks, and drinks_ ). 

She’s more hungover than drunk the next morning, mascara stains cupping the already heavy bags under her eyes, when she finds the file. 

“Miss Potts?” FRIDAY’s voice pipes up over the din over her own headache, “Mr Stark wanted you to see this.”

On one of his screens, Tony appears, and Pepper gasps into the crackling silence of the lab. Her breath stinks of alcohol. It’s all very morbid, cruelly familiar and cyclic. 

“ _Pepper_ ,” Tony’s hologram says, a shadow cast over his eyes, so very serious, “ _If you’re watching this, it means something happened to me_ ,” He takes a dramatic pause, a deep breath, feels the weight of this whole ordeal. She can see an empty glass just to the right of where he wrings his hands anxiously, “ _And I hope I go out someway awesome. Like when I’m ninety and my heart just gives out after a round of mind blowing boning. Or I save the entire universe and they put on parades for me and send up fireworks in the shape of my face_.”

It’s supposed to sound like him, and goodness, it does. There goes Tony’s sardonic flare again, yapping about parades and fireworks when he’s making a video in case of his own death. But he gets it all a little too on the nose for Pepper to let herself laugh. There were no parades. There were no fireworks. There was just a list in Times Square of names that never seemed to cease. 

“ _But anyways, just in case I get booted out of this universe and I leave a bit of a mess behind_ ,” Pepper feels a shiver run through her, “ _I’ve got something for you_.”

A highly detailed set of schematics scrolls across the screen. 

They look like blueprints similar to one of the later Iron Man suit models, except it’s slimmer, more slender, and taller. 

“ _It’s for you_ ,” He says, and Pepper’s knuckles whiten around the glass in her hand as the pieces start to fall together in her mind, “ _I know you, Pep. And I know you don’t like feeling useless. If I’m gone and I leave disaster in my wake and you need a way to protect yourself, this is it. If you don’t need it to protect yourself, you can still use it to help others, you hear me? That’s what I did. This suit changed me. Some for the better, some for the worst. And I know you hated this thing, called it a clunk of metal, everything that was wrong with our relationship. It gave you too much to worry over. But Pep, if I’m gone, I don’t want you to have to worry_.”

She’s crying. Again. She can’t help it. This is Tony, on her screen, talking so earnestly from beyond the grave. Of course she’s crying. 

“ _You don’t have to use it. Hell, you could burn it down to liquid metals if you really wanted, if it helps you get your anger out. But just in case you ever need this, I made it for you._ ”

FRIDAY takes that as her cue to reveal the suit.

A silvery panel in one of the walls slides away and the suit rolls out on this grand pedestal, shiny and sleek like a brand new car.

Pepper inches around the display, her hand trailing reverently around the waist of the glittering suit. It’s beautiful. Just like Tony’s. 

“ _I hope you like it. I updated it right up until I, um...well, ‘go out’, I guess. Whenever I update my own suit, I update yours, too. I know you’ll use it wisely_.” She’s examining the suits intricacies, its power, and it’s all too much. The Tony in the video takes such a long pause that she almost thinks the video’s done, gone, her last piece of Tony over like that, leaving her with metal in her hands and a sinking vibranium feeling pushing on her heart. 

But when Pepper looks away from the suit, she sees that he’s still there, taking a long pull of his ever-present golden drink, liquid gold turned to liquid courage turned to words he doesn’t know how to say, “ _Pepper_ ,” He says, so earnestly that she can’t help but stumble away from the suit back toward this hologram. 

It’s almost like he’s right there, like he can see her tears, is about to reach through the pixels and wipe away the wetness beneath her eyes, “ _I want you to know that I love you_ ,” She knows. She knows. She knows. “ _You’re everything that pushed me to be good, to be who I am today. I don’t know how I’m gonna die in the future, in your present, but no matter how I go I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you. I’m sorry for hurting you. But I’m not sorry for loving you, okay_?” Pepper closes her eyes, shuts off the tears, because she can’t handle this, everything hurts. Tony tries to smile, but it’s all too sad to really look like him, “ _Move on. Be great. Be the Pepper motherfucking Potts that the world knows you are. You never really needed me to do that anyway. I love you_.” His eyes are sparkling and goddamn it hurts, “ _See you around, Miss Potts_.”

With that, the video goes blank. 

Pepper’s quiet for so long, just staring numbly at the empty screen that FRIDAY feels the need to say something. 

“M’am?” Comes the robotic voice, echoing with the ones and zeroes that Pepper knows Tony put in there ( _everything here? It’s his. All his. It always had been_ ), “Would you like to watch it again?”

Pepper honestly doesn’t know if she’d be able to handle that. 

She refills her glass and nods. 

“Yeah,” She says, finishing off one of the bottles from Tony’s liquor cabinet, “Play it again.”

It’s not until she’s watched and rewatched the video a grand total of 52 times that even FRIDAY begins to become concerned and Pepper forces herself not to watch it again. 

After all, she can’t torture herself forever ( _you lived and he didn’t, you lived and he didn’t, you lived and he didn’t_ ).

She gets up and moves to the suit. 

It’s beautiful. 

Tony’s work. It looks like something he made, breathes of Tony Stark in all of its intracisies. For him, she tries it on. 

It’s a perfect fit. 

With this suit, Pepper feels powerful. 

She feels more powerful than she did with her shiny stilettos or that briefcase full of secrets. She didn’t know that was possible. 

She doesn’t feel like she just lost everybody, doesn’t feel like the world is being ripped into two even halves by the ginormous palms of a purple god. Now she understands just a little bit more why Tony always wore his suit. With the faceplate, she feels like somebody else for once, like her head is filled with someone else’s problems, her concerns limited to the confines of the suit’s exact capabilities: fighting crime, saving lives, and that was about it.

That evening, Pepper takes her new suit out for a test drive. 

She remembers Tony’s first test drive in one of the earliest suits. He had started countless fires in the workshop and had left a red-and-gold, man-shaped hole in his wake as he flew up and up and away from all his problems. Pepper does the same thing but with less destruction- there’s no doting assistant/future CEO to clean up after her, it’s just her now. 

“I wanna try the suit,” Pepper says stiffly, looking towards the ceiling, “Don’t tell the Avengers where I am if they ask please, FRIDAY.”

FRIDAY only briefly hesitates, “Of course, m’am,” The large garage door opens for her, “Safe flying.”

She takes off into the night, the sky bleeding with this surreal indigo color like an ultramarine tsunami had combusted around the glittering stars. Everything smells different up there. It smells like freedom, like someone else’s life. Like a world unhampered by loss. Like another universe. 

Hours later, Pepper lands back at the compound, the large metal boots hitting the cement of the garage with a loud _thud_. 

It’s late. Nearly morning based on the pre-dawn light dusting the horizon. The rest of the world is probably asleep, dead to the madness in her head. 

The rest of the world that is, except for Captain America apparently who comes running into the basement. He’s only wearing loose sleeping pants and no shirt nor shoes. His shield is clutched tightly within his grip. The sound of his feet clambering through the building echoes through Pepper like another world she doesn’t recognize. 

When he makes it to the doorway he freezes, pales like he’s seen a ghost. 

Pepper realizes she’s still wearing the suit, each and every piece of it assembled perfectly around herself. She imagines she looks like a ghost anyway, red and gold and a thing of the past. 

“ _Tony_?” Steve gasps, and it almost sounds reverent, hopeful. 

Pepper takes pity on him, peels away the faceplate and tries to appear as calm and sympathetic as possible despite the chlorine-addled swimming pool filling up inside her head. 

“Sorry,” She says, grimacing sympathetically, “It’s just me.”

She watches the hopefulness drop like a pebble in an ocean. Steve sinks into himself. 

Pepper imagines Steve has a lot of regrets. She knew that Tony had more than his fair share when it came to Steve at any rate. Regret tended to be a two-way street in things like that. She peels off another piece of armor and shakes her head, “No, Tony’s still gone.”

When the suit is completely unassembled on the floor, no longer this sentient part of her, Pepper feels oddly cold, empty maybe. The reality of pantsuits and paperwork flutters over her like ash over a butterfly and now she’s tired more than anything, whole body aching with insomnia and the hangover that comes after the wicked cocktail made of grief and over-inebriation. 

She scrubs her face tiredly with her hand and looks up to find Steve still there. For the first time, it dons on her that Steve looks proportionally exhausted to how she feels. Death takes its tolls on superhumans, too. Especially when those superhumans very obviously have regrets like Steve’s. 

Pepper tries a smile on and it feels weird, like wearing somebody else’s underwear or using a toothbrush that doesn’t belong to you. 

“Hey,” She says, trying to sound optimistic, because somebody has to do it, “What do you say we make a pot of coffee?”

Steve looks massively relieved. 

He actually smiles, and his feels all so genuine, it’s touching, “I’d love that, Pepper,” He says, and leads the way out of the workshop.

“Lights out, FRIDAY,” Pepper says, and she hears the door lock ominously behind her like the preservation of another world. She stands there for a second, her reflection looking back at herself in the shiny glass wall of the workshop. 

From the top of the stairs, Steve calls down, “Milk, no sugar, right, Pepper?”

She takes a deep breath, she doesn’t think she’d be able to take another step without it, then she moves up the stairs, one foot in front of the other, and reminds herself how to breathe again, “Yeah,” She calls up, voice sounding high and overly-optimistic, glossy in a way she hates, “I’m impressed you remembered.”

She shuts the door down to the workshop when she comes up into the kitchen. 

“So that suit,” Steve brings up an hour later, two cups of coffee in and they’d barely said a word each, “Mighty fancy.”

Pepper can barely bring herself to nod. She reads into the depths of her near-empty coffee cup, trying to find a fortune that isn’t there. 

“You gonna use it?”

She had barely considered it beyond _Tony, Tony, this screams of Tony_. Pepper looks blankly at him, blinks. 

“Carry on his legacy maybe?”

The way Steve says ‘his legacy’ is with such delicacy it’s like the words are crafted from glass and he’s fearful of them in his powerful hands. Pepper… appreciates it. 

“I hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet,” She admits, her voice cracking faintly. 

“You can be an Avenger,” Steve offers, and it’s very sweet the way he holds onto the team’s old moniker as if the word alone could bring everybody back, “Work with the rest of us, clean up this world we’re stuck with, y’know?”

Pepper continues to stare pensively into her coffee mug. Iron Man had certainly saved Tony’s life, but it’d also changed everything so much, Pepper isn’t sure if she’s capable. Her hands wrap tightly around her mug as she looks up at Steve, “I’ll think about it, okay, Rogers?”

Steve hums affirmatively. They settle into silence again. They don’t speak.

It’s a week later and Pepper decides it’s about time she saves the world with the rest of them. 

She had been with Stark Industries for clean-up, getting sent out to places that were particularly hard hit or suffering because of The Snap. A few countries experienced political turmoil with their leading politicians snapped away, a few countries lost workers in the midst of operating dangerous equipment, lots of kids were orphaned by parents snapped away. People everywhere are in need of help. Stark Industries is trying their damnedest to do their part to make things better. 

She’s in Venezuela this time- or at least she thinks she is, she’s kinda lost track of which South American country she’s in, all she knows is that everybody is either speaking rapid Spanish she doesn’t understand, in mourning, or a mind-rattling combination of the two. 

Two days in and she is faced with a wall of red tape so infuriatingly impenetrable Pepper was on the verge of _losing it._

Then the Avengers waltz onto the scene and just like that, with less than a snap of their fingers they are welcomed on board. Pepper watches in awe, in slack-jawed, bureaucratic envy as they actually get the work done that needs to be done. 

She visits Steve’s hotel room that night, a case full of carefully lettered paperwork tucked under her left elbow. 

“Steve,” She says, all professional silk and graceful poise, “I have a proposition for you.”

He looks at her funny, a single eyebrow raised, and he glances down at his pajama pants and raggedy tee shirt then back up at her. 

“Not that kind of proposition, god no,” She corrects shifting her briefcase to her front, “A professional proposition. Call it Avengers business. Can we talk?”

He steps aside, smiles all lopsided and as earnest as possible at a time like this, “What do ya’ got, Pep?”

“Certainly something big,” Is all she says before the door is shutting behind her. 

The next day in Caracas, the Avengers step out again to battle the political corruption that the country faces. However this time, there’s a new face in the crowd, standing tall, metal plates glinting in the South American sun.

Cap makes the official introduction at a brief, early morning press conference, “In this time of need,” He says, emblazoned and declarative as the whole audience listens raptly, “The Avengers have opened our arms to a new face. Our newest member has asked that we do not share their identity with the public for reasons that we will respect today, tomorrow, and every day following until one day they decide to share their story with the world. For now, we will only know the newest Avenger as the Iron Maiden.”

At that, Pepper steps forward, fully suited and entirely regal. Cameras flash at a disarming pace like chain lightning that never ends.

The name not only pays homage to one of Tony’s favorite band’s- music of which Pepper had frequently heard blasting in his workshop, the soundtrack to his ups and downs and in betweens- but being Iron speaks of the hero Tony loved to be- his legacy- and being the Maiden counterpart speaks to the love that Tony had for her specifically. It almost hurts her to say her new name, a triple edged sword in its own right, dipped with a poison called nostalgia that swells her tongue like venom every time she says the new moniker. The pain of it almost feels good, it feels right. 

Pepper wonders if this is how Tony felt beneath his mask all those times before: bulletproof, powerful, needed. With this mask, Pepper knows she can do the work that she’s been trying to do for months. 

With cameras flashing all around, the Iron Maiden waves proudly. Through a garbled, robotic voice, she says, “I’m glad to be with the Avengers today. I’m looking forward to helping those in need during these trying times. I am not here to fill a gap left by those who left us in the Snap,” It’s an obvious allusion to the loss of Iron Man, the only Avenger who had been taken, the one that the world mourned, “But rather, I’m here to pick up where he left off. Those lost by this travesty will not be forgotten, but we won’t leave behind survivors either. We cannot be crippled by grief. In these trying times, we must be the heroes that we all can be. And everybody can be a hero, not just those who have fancy suits and big names. Anybody can be a hero.”

She strikes a pose, makes it look good for the cameras, and thinks about what Tony would do if he were in her position. She thinks that he would’ve given some dramatic monologue at least somewhat similar to her own speech. She hopes so, yearns to do good in this suit of his, for him. 

Beneath the faceplate, Pepper fights off tears. The cameras continue to flash benignly. Beside her, Steve is grinning like a showman put on display. They must make quite the pair, heroic at such an awkward time. Cameras flash everywhere. The other Avengers are silent behind them. Pepper reminds herself who this is all for, over and over again. For the first time since she had packed the paperwork into the case back in her own hotel room, she wonders if maybe this is too much. She says she’s doing it for him, for Tony, but what if she reaches too far and swallows up his legacy in the meantime? A weird feeling settles in her stomach. She dutifully ignores it. 

Pepper distantly imagines that the suit must look brave from the outside, puffs her chest minutely, and continues to wave. Cameras flash from every angle. Nat and Clint and Bruce are silent behind her. Pepper keeps waving. 

There are a lot of press conferences after that. Being in the public eye, it’s nothing Pepper isn’t used to. The clean-up, the Avengers business, the wearing of a giant metal suit, that’s all different to her, uncharted territory. But press conferences? Pepper can handle press conferences; she’s had more than her fair share of them, she could do it in her sleep. 

Beside her, Steve smiles serenely post-monologue, “Any questions?” 

The room erupts.

Steve points to a reporter in the third row, “You have a question?”

“Yes, I have a question for the Iron Maiden,” The reporter declares over the commotion, “Many have read into the Iron Maiden pseudonym as a connection between you and the late Tony Stark. Considering his CEO, Pepper Potts, has been particularly absent lately and rumors has it that she was engaged to him prior to The Snap, many have inferred she’s has taken up the moniker. That being said, does the Iron Maiden have any comment on these rumors?”

She knows it’s stupid, idiotic really, exactly the kind of behavior she knows for a fact that she isn’t supposed to display at press conferences, even when she’s wearing a suit that weighs two tons, but she falters, stills tellingly. 

Everybody sees it, they all know the reporter hit a sore spot.

Thankfully, Steve sees it, too. He steps forward, a protective arm spread open to keep Pepper from moving forward and responding herself as if that was what she was about to do, as if she could move at all. 

“The Avengers have rather politely asked that no inquiries be made about the Iron Maiden’s identity. It’s a matter of respect that we expect from this press pool, and I’m disappointed to hear some of you don’t have it,” His eyes are piercing as they peruse the crowd. Pepper’s heart is stuck in her throat, _engaged to him before he disappeared, before he disappeared, disappeared, disappeared_. She gets whiplash as the words rattle around in her big metal suit. There’s an edge to Steve’s voice that could cut glass, “If any other members of the press make an inquiring requiring her identity, you will not be invited back. I think questions will be closed for the rest of the day.”

With that, Steve ushers the Iron Maiden and the rest of the Avengers out of the room. Reporters continue to holler as the hurry out. 

“ _Steve_ ,” Pepper hisses, metal fingers fumbling for the faceplate release. She can’t breathe. _Engaged. Disappeared_. She can’t find the release. 

Steve grabs a hold of her hand, “ _No,”_ He demands, “ _Not until we’re out of ear shot_.”

She hears Clint back in the other room say something profane and disdainful before storming inelegantly away from the podium. Nat comes up in front of her eyesight then, a hand on her other side. Steve looks weird with those big sympathetic eyes of his juxtaposed by the bright blue of his suit. Everything is stuck in her throat. She needs to get out of this thing. 

The door between the press room and the rest of the compound shuts with a click, and Steve lets go of her arm, nods. 

Pepper pulls herself out of the suit like she’s on fire, clicking the release with a stop, drop, and roll, electrified and bound by the smoke of the past. 

She’s panting, tears prickling her eyes. She can’t seem to catch her breath. Somewhere around her, Bruce starts to count, “Listen to my voice,” He says, “ _Twenty, nineteen, eighteen_ …”

When she finally manages to catch her breath, a sequence of numbers left behind and the Iron Maiden faceplate left abandoned on the floor, she at first refuses to open her eyes. 

“Pepper,” Steve finally says, voice soft and strong, “It’s okay. You can talk to us, if you need to.”

She doesn’t know if she physically can. 

“Did you know we were engaged?” She chokes out, her throat tight, “The wedding was going to be in May.”

She’s met only with silence. 

Sometimes, when it’s dark or things feel bleak, she’ll mistakenly get a phantom sense of jewelry on her ring finger. Nothing’s been there since she first started looking up at that list in Time Square, but sometimes this world feels more like a dream- like a _nightmare_ \- than reality. 

“No,” Steve says, voice gravelly. Nat’s hand tightens around her arm. Bruce and Clint watch on protectively, “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry, Pepper.”

Pepper has to force herself to pull herself together. She can’t do this, whine like a baby. Everybody lost something in this unrequited war, everybody lost _somebody_. She isn’t special just because there was once a ring, there was once dreams. 

“It’s okay,” She finally says, wiping tears out of her eyes, “I shouldn’t be this upset. Thank you. I didn’t mean to ruin the press conference.”

“You didn’t ruin the press conference,” Steve reassures her. 

“Don’t we have work to do?” She ascertains. Tony would be working- if he were here. If she’s going to wear this suit, borrow his moniker, she needs to work, too. She can’t stop for silly reasons like this, like memories and grief. Everybody has memories and grief nowadays anyway, nothing special.

“C’mon, Cap, your supposed to be the leader of the crew,” Pepper says not without kindness, a grin taking on her face, “Let’s get to it shall we?”

Deep down, Pepper knows that doing actual work is just about the only way she’s going to get through this. Well, the only way short of bringing him back to life, and contrary to Bruce’s reappearance that just isn’t possible. 

Steve looks her over for a long moment before finally nodding, eyes carefully trained on her, “Alright,” He says, “You got me there. Let’s get to work, Avengers.”

They get to three different countries, kickstart the healing process in every one, before that thing falls from the sky. 

What’s left of NASA contacts them, a shiver in the lowly engineer’s voice, “ _Th-there’s something up there and it’s coming down towards us again_.”

Steve is ramrod still, a hand clutched in a white grasp around the edge of the table, “What’s its landing point?”

The engineer sounds like he’s shaking, maybe even crying, and it takes him a long moment before he’s able to answer, “Sir,” He says, “It’s going to land in the middle of New York City. Central Park.”

Pepper thinks about that skyline, the hands that built it, and what it would mean if anybody were to shatter that tangible piece of legacy. She steels herself for the worst. 

When Steve hangs up the phone, he looks up at the semi-Circle of Avengers around him, all ready for battle just like they are every single day, every minute, “Avengers,” Steve says, a dark shadow cast over his eyes, “Assemble.”

They fly back to New York immediately. Another threat would be… devastating to say the least. Earth had not been ready for galactic war and it shattered like a mirror off course. The souls of the people shattered with it. They couldn’t take another blow. 

They stand in the middle of Central Park in battle position, necks craned back and eyes glued to the sky. 

When the object first appears to them, it looks almost like a meteor, a violent but beautiful comet striking down toward Earth. Then as it gets closer and closer they realize it looks less like an interstellar object hurtling towards them and more like a fiery, metal hunk breaking the atmosphere at alarming speeds, getting bigger and bigger as it approaches. 

Steve wraps his shield around his body, Clint locks an arrow into place on his bow, and Pepper readies her repulsors. 

The air around them is thick with tension, and Pepper can feel the anxiety even through her advanced mask. She’s never been so literally part of the action, never been front and center to an attack that she would have to face without Tony. There’s a knitted bundle burrowed deep in her stomach crafted by fear. She wants to run, to hide. She’s never been so close before, but she’s an Avenger now, she can’t back down. She takes a steadying breath. The others look entirely nonplussed by the sight of the intimidating object with its sights set on their planet, if anything they look mighty, fearless. Pepper feels as if she’s about to throw up. The object gets closer. 

“ _I estimate it’ll drop in… three minutes, Avengers_ ,” Steve says, voice grave and serious, “ _Be ready_.”

They’ve been ready for months now, waiting for a boom like this, for something to find it’s way down and explode the lasting likeness of peace they’ve crafted on their planet. 

When the object makes contact, it makes the sound of a million fireworks, like the aftereffects of a smoker lighting a cigarette in a gunpowder factory. The Avengers watch as the alien object skids across Central Park, pulling up grass and dirt with it like a tsunami that’s lost its way onto shore. 

It’s essentially a gigantic metal chunk with bits of blue and orange paint peeling off of it like wallpaper in an abandoned house. The dense sheets of smoke block most of the object from view, gray on gray on a mystery that they’re left to solve. 

She can hear the others breathing heavily beside her- Nat, Clint, Bruce, Thor, and Steve, all trapped like voices in her head, a lightning bolt of adrenaline jotting anxiously between the group of them like an homage to… something faraway. 

It’s after several long and tense moments- during which Steve quite loudly attempts to negotiate over the cacophonous hissing of the broken alien craft- when two figures stumble out of the craft. They look like ghosts, shrouded by tendrils of smoke and coughing like they’ve fallen into the wrong world, each one limping morosely. 

In the back of her head, Pepper takes pity on these creatures. These aliens. Then she remembers that they’re more than just a couple of foreigners, they're invaders. Earth cannot take another Thanos. _Pepper_ cannot take another Thanos. 

The repulsors flare hotter. To her left, Clint’s grip on his bow tightens. The aliens stumble closer, as if trapped in a horrible slow motion sequence. Pepper can hear her heart beat in her ears- but then again that might be somebody else’s heart beating she can’t tell the difference anymore. 

The light finally hits their invaders at this very specific angle, breaking through the dense fog of malfunction, and reveals a familiar shape in the silhouette of this creature. Pepper’s heart tightens, tugs dangerously, but she reminds herself how to be a fighter, an Avenger.

She hears it when Steve falters beside her, an alarmingly sharp intake of breath, a gasp the size of the Grand Canyon. Nobody mentions it, they’re all too busy staring. 

Nobody, that is, until finally the figures are merely outlined by their wreckage, and goodness Pepper recognizes that shape, that face, the curve of that body like nothing else. 

Time goes still. 

The strange figures are standing before the gathering of Avengers when one of them falls to his knees on the ground, sad and wilting and kissing the dirt like he treasured gravity like gold. He looks up and-

“ _Tony_?” Pepper gasps. Her heart breaks. The repulsors flutter meaningfully. 

That’s Tony’s face, tired and seared with hopelessness, a sad sort of victory drenched in irreverence. 

The other figure, cast in an ethereal, acrylic blue looks sore and bruised, like a cerulean trainwreck personified. She looks like steel battered into infinity. She looks strong. Pepper only has eyes for the broken figure genuflecting like a sick man before them. 

“Steve-“ He says then, his eyes wide. There’s a streak of dried blood cast over his right brow. They watch as he recognizes his teammates- Natasha, Clint, then Bruce and Thor, staring at their faces, a shade of relief flashing across his features. Then he sees the suit and for a moment he’s visibly confused- did they replace him already? Who did they find that- 

“Tony!” Pepper cries out again, climbing out of the suit like her skin’s on fire, “Tony!” 

He remembers the suit, remembers getting drunk off his ass right before he made that goddamn video. She must’ve watched the video then, he thinks. She must’ve thought he was dead the whole time, probably tortured herself over it, and she did goddammit. 

Tony finally stands, sways awkwardly under his own weight, looks like he’s sleepwalking, dreaming a dream of returning to the arms of his friends after being trapped in space for so, so long. 

“Pepper?”

“It’s me, Tony,” She says, the suit half-constructed behind her. The Avengers still have their weapons at the ready, but they don’t move to stop Pepper running toward him. She wraps her hands around his face, so that his eyes are level with hers, “Are you really back? Is this real?” It feels like a dream as much for her as it does for him. 

“I think so,” He says, “As far as I can tell I’m pretty real.”

She looks deep into the blue of his eyes for several long moments, time stretching like the malleable construct it is, “ _You survived_?”

When she speaks, her voice cracks morosely.

Tony’s battered and bruised with a Star-shaped black eye, more scars than entirely countable; his body is at least fifty pounds lighter than before he had broken Earth’s orbit all those weeks ago. He still manages one of his grins, wide and dastardly.

“What?” He says, a laugh dangling off his tongue that makes Pepper feel like her insides are gonna peel in half like some weak facsimile of an eggshell, “You thought I’d let you have all the fun?”

“Tony-“ Pepper says, a tear-laden warning as she clutches his face tighter. He laughs.

“I’m here now. Feel free to applaud.” All that time in captivity did nothing to his sense of humor, his voice lower as he presses a kiss to her cheek, “We’ve got a world to save, don’t we?”

He lets his hands fall into hers, his forehead leaning against her own. When nobody is looking or paying attention and when Tony really stops caring either way, he presses a kiss to her lips, kisses away the tears that made home in the corners of her eyes, “I’m here now, baby. I survived.”

Right then, Pepper clutches onto his hand like nothing else she’s ever held onto before. She doesn’t want to let go, too afraid of losing him all over again. 

She played with madness once before. Pepper isn’t interested in doing it again.

“I like the new look, Miss Potts,” Tony says with a grin, “Who’s the designer?”

There’s still tears prickling her eyes. Pepper imagines the tears will never leave. Tony still gets her to crack a wry smile, even let out a breathy laugh, and she tugs him closer, “Oh, shut up, Tony.”


End file.
